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Teen Night Asthma
Location: Milford, Ohio Date: November 12, 1993 Story Sometimes an asthma attack becomes a life-threatening emergency, as 16-year-old Angie Kenna of Milford, Ohio, discovered on the harrowing night of November 12, 1993. Angie usually shared a room with her younger sister, Pam, but on that night, Pam was staying at their father's house. Their mother, Beverly, went to bed early, while Angie stayed up to finish her homework. "Angie was diagnosed as an asthmatic at about the age of 5 or 6," Beverly said. "It's progessively gotten worse. When she gets short of breath, she can't walk any distance because she can't catch her breath enough to do so. She had had a period of 2 to 3 years where she hadn't had any serious attacks. With a severe asthma attack, the actual airway tree is so spasmed down that they're unable to breathe air in. They're going to die if they don't get help right away." At 5:30 the next morning, Angie woke suddenly, gasping for air, in the grip of a severe asthma attack. She reached for her nebulizer to help her breathe, but the attack had progessed so far so quickly that it didn't work. Her bedroom door was closed, and she could not get enough air into her lungs to yell for help. She grabbed the phone near her bed and dialed 911. Claremont County dispatcher Marcey Phillips took the call. "911 Emergency," she said. "Help me," Angie gasped into the phone. "What's the matter?" Phillips asked. "Asthma," Angie managed to say. "Okay, you're in apartment 27?" asked Phillips, who was able to trace the address of the call through the 911 system. "Yes," came Angie's strained reply, followed by the sound of the phone falling to the floor. "She just said 'asthma.' She couldn't talk enough to give me any information, but I knew where she lived through the 911 system. It appeared on my screen," Phillips said. "Okay, we have a person on the phone having a severe asthma attack," she reported to the police and to EMS personnel. "Angie. are you still there?" Phillips asked, returning to the teenager's call. All she could hear in repsonse was wheezing and coughing. "We're going to send a squad out, okay?" she went on. "Is there anybody with you?" There wasa no response. "It scares you," Phillips said, "because you don't know what's happening to her. The breathing machine got louder in the background. I could not hear her breathing at all. I lost contact with her, and there was nothing I could do to help her." Officer Gary Rausch had been on patrol less than 4 minutes away. "The dispatcher told me to proceed to an address with the report of a person having difficulty breathing," Officer Rausch said. He knocked at the door of the Kennas' apartment, and Beverly answered it. "To my surprise, there was a police officer at the door," she said. "I had no idea why he was there." "Is everything okay there? Is there any problem here?" asked Officer Rausch, as Beverly's boyfriend joined her at the door. "You must have gotten a wrong number," Beverly said. "There's nothing wrong here." "She said that there was no problem there. When I saw a boyfriend appear behind her, my initial suspicions were that it was a possible domestic quarrel of some sort," said Officer Rausch. "If the people say there's no problem, I turn around and leave." Nonetheless, this time he went just a little further. "The dispatcher said she was actually talking to somebody and that the person was having trouble breathing and they lost contact," he said. That was all that Beverly needed to hear. "Angie!" she cried, and raced to her room. "Right then I knew, if someone was having trouble breathing, who it was." "It's my daughter! It's my daughter!" she yelled, after she reached Angie's side. "I was scared to death," she said. "Angie was unconscious and you could hear the mucus in her airways." She was turning blue," said Officer Rausch, "so I advised dispatch to have them step it up." Miami County paramedics Terry Robbins and Steve Monterosso arrived soon afterward. "The police officer said, 'Hurry up. It's a 16-year-old. She's not breathing,'" said Robbins. "Your heart kind of clamps up, I don't think you take a breath until you're inside there. With asthma, the air passages literally seal up. We were going to have to open up her lungs or we were going to lose her." "Just as I was putting an oral airway into her throat to put that tube into her, she clenched down her jaws, which made intubation almost impossible," said Monterosso. "I didn't want to lose what little airway we did have, and I just bagged her with a breathing bag." "We're going to have to do something, Steve. We're not moving any air at all," said Robbins, who was watching Angie's chest for signs of motion. "She was so tight and closed up that as hard as we could squeeze that bag, we couldn't even force any air into her. We gave her some epinephrine, a little bit of air was now going in, but not enough to bring her around. You could literally watch her heart rate begin to slow down from lack of oxygen." "I didn't believe that she would pull out of it," said Beverly. University of Cincinnati Hospital flight doctor Sabrina Leach arrived and took charge of the scene. "I was very concerned because she was doing what we call posturing, which you see when somebody is not getting enough oxygen to her brain," Leach said. "If that continued, she could get permanent brain damage from that. She needed to have an airway. We went ahead and intubated her by inserting a breathing tube down her nose. We also went ahead and started giving her medication that is aerosolized and goes directly into the lungs. This was the most severe asthma case that I'd seen." "We're going to be going to University Hospital," she told Beverly. "It was so scary seeing her like that," Beverly said. "All I could think of was, would she survive this? She just looked so close to death." Angie was flown to the hospital in an Air Care helicopter, and admitted to the emergency department under the care of Dr. Rashmi Kothari. "She was completely unresponsive and basically comatose," Kothari said. "She was young, which was in her favor, but it bothered me that she wasn't moving at all." Pam and their father, David, joined Beverly at the hospital as soon as they heard what had happened. "I said 'I love you, Angie,' and touched her hand so I could see if there was any reaction," David said. "And there was none." "I was feeling sad," said Pam. "I didn't know if something was wrong with her brain. But I knew she wouldn't die because she was a fighter." Four days later, Angie was released from the hospital. Amazingly she suffered no brain damage. "It's made me want to stay closer to her," said Beverly. "Her asthma's still unstable at this point. She has new medication. She has a device that she carries with her so that if she has a problem, she can give herself a shot of adrenaline. I love her with all my heart. I'd do anything that I could to help her. "If I could, I'd go through the asthma myself, but it's something that she has to do on her own, and all we can do is be there to encourage her." "I used to be really embarrased about my asthma," Angie said, "but then I realized that there would be times that I would have trouble in front of other people, and I couldn't hide it." "It may never go away. It may always be there," said Beverly, "but she can get it under control. She can have a normal life." "I love my sister and everything about her," Pam said. "She makes faces jokes around a lot. If she wouldn't have made it, I'd miss her--all of her--being there. She's there for me whenever I need her." "I want to thank everybody for what they did for her and how they helped her," Beverly said. "None of that would have happened, either, if she hadn't dialed 911." "I've been told that she had only minutes--that it was that close," said David. "If the dispatcher had not seen the address on the screen, I'm almost positive that she would not have made it. I don't know of she knows it or not, but having almost lost her, there's almost nothing I wouldn't do at this point to protect her." "Having asthma is hard," Angie said. "But it will never, never get the best of me." Category:1993 Category:Ohio Category:Asthma